A runaway chicken has been taken into custody in East Calgary. The wayward chicken turned up at the front door of Forest Lawn resident Samantha Scherer on Friday and knocked on her door with its beak. After safely guiding it into her fenced-off back yard, Scherer and her husband left it some Cheerios. Scherer said she has two dogs; otherwise, she’d let the animal inside. However, the chicken apparently got a bit rattled by Scherer’s dogs, because by Saturday, it turned up at her next-door neighbour’s home. “Sure enough, there’s this chicken in the yard—(so) we corralled it into the back yard,” said Dana Jones. That prompted the question of who do you tell when there’s a lost chicken in your back yard? “We called Fish and Wildlife,” Jones said, “but a chicken gets a peace officer.” Jones said the chicken staged a second jailbreak, escaping onto her front lawn, but between her, her boyfriend and the peace officer -- who, it turns out, grew up on a farm and was a bit of a chicken whisperer -- they were able to corral the freedom-loving fowl into a a kennel cage in order to transport it to the local SPCA. Jones said the chicken was well hydrated -- she gave it water and some crackers before it departed. “We were glad it was picked up,” she said. All of which begs a follow-up question: if no one claims it, do people adopt chickens? “I would guess so,” Jones said. “They have goats and stuff come in. “When I was 19 in Red Deer, I volunteered at the Humane Society,” she said. “And we had people who brought in lost goats. “Never in a million years did I think I’d be babysitting a lost chicken, but there you go!” CTV News has reached out to the Calgary Humane Society for comment. With files from CTV News’ Camilla Di Giuseppe
